Chapter XXXIX: Notes on Protestant Missions in China

Two thousand four hundred and fifty-eight Protestant workers (including wives) represent the missionary energies and the many divisions of Christendom. The native Protestant communicants number 80,632.[61]

The shock which China received through her defeat by Japan has produced, among other results, a disposition to make inquiries regarding the God, faith, and learning of those “Western Barbarians” from whom Japan received the art of war. Although hostility to Christianity as a destructive and socially disintegrating power has been recently evidenced by the anti-Christian riots at Kien-ing and elsewhere, the spirit of inquiry gathers volume, and expresses itself in large gatherings in street-chapels and churches, the thronging to mission schools, and the avidity with which Christian literature is purchased. Those who profess themselves ready to abandon heathenism and connect themselves with Christianity are more than the missionaries can instruct. In MANCHURIA there are six thousand inquirers in connection with the Scotch and Irish missions. In the FU-KIEN province the movement towards Christianity is on so extensive a scale as to attract the serious attention of the provincial authorities, as well as emphatic recognition by our own consuls. In one mission alone of the American Board, in another province, the number of inquirers into the Christian religion is estimated at 12,000.

The growing influence of Christianity, however, cannot be measured either by the numbers of communicants or inquirers. For many years past, large numbers of Christian men and women have been scattered through nearly all the provinces of China, making their homes among the Chinese, with the avowed object of promulgating what is known as the “_Jesus Religion_.” Their methods of propagandism—preaching, conversation, schools, dispensaries, hospitals, and the circulation of Christian literature only differ slightly. Their knowledge of Chinese is necessarily imperfect, and they often make grotesque and even serious blunders. As their methods and mistakes in the language are much alike, so too are their lives. The keenest Chinese critic finds no difference in conduct and the motives which rule it, between the Scotch missionaries in MANCHURIA, the China Inland Mission and Canadian, etc., in SZE CHUAN, the Church Missionary Society in the FU-KIEN Province, and the German and American in KWANTUNG. These 2500 men and women are seen under the “fierce light” of criticism which beats upon them, whether at home or abroad, to lead pure, just, truthful, kind, honest, virtuous, patient lives, restraining temper and suffering long. These lives preach a higher standard of living than is inculcated by the highest Chinese teaching, and by slow degrees produce results which cannot be tabulated. The fame of the foreign teacher’s payment of wages agreed upon, without drawbacks, his truthfulness, justice, kind treatment of servants,[62] control of temper, and accessibility, travels far, and each life so lived is an influence making for righteousness in the neighbourhood, exciting inquiry into the “Jesus Religion” and foreign learning, and exercising a distinct influence on surrounding morality in certain directions.

The direct part of missionary work need scarcely be touched upon. It consists in awakening the conscience to a sense of sin, by the preaching of “righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come.” It dwells upon the justice and love of God, on the atonement of Christ, on that Divine Fatherhood before whose infinite compassions there is not a stranger, an alien, a foreigner; on the “one sacrifice for sin once offered”; and teaches that the purpose of the sacrifice, and of law and gospel, is, that men may live “soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world,” in preparation for a stainless and endless life. It teaches that the morality of the Great Teacher is but a “shadow of good things to come”—of the higher and perfect morality demanded by the Divine law, and that the power outside ourselves which “makes for righteousness” and “helps our infirmities,” is the power of God; that “God is love,” and yearns over His wandering children; that He has “showed man what is good,” and that “His only begotten Son,” who in some mysterious manner “bore our sins in His own body on the tree,” is “He who is alive for evermore,” and “ever liveth to make intercession,” and that He “hath abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through His Gospel.”

This, in brief, is the teaching of all Protestant missionaries in China, to whatever church they belong, and with one or two exceptions all regard baptism as an obligatory confession of faith, and as the evidence of a complete break with the beliefs and practices of heathenism.

Under such teaching 80,000 Chinese in 1898 were making a public profession of the Christian faith. Many annually lapse; the greater number owing to family influence, and difficulties in the abandonment of the time and custom-honoured social observances connected with idolatry; some because they find the moral restraints of Christianity too hard for them, and others because they hoped for worldly advantages which they failed to obtain. A large number of professing converts are employed by missionaries as servants, gatekeepers, teachers, printers, translators, and writers, of whose sincerity it may not always be possible to judge, as foreign employment is much coveted.

But after putting these and other dubious converts aside, there remains a large body of native Christians, gathered into societies, which after long and careful inquiry I believe to be fully up to the average mark of our churches at home in essential knowledge, and above it in practice, specially in propagandist zeal and liberality—societies of men and women, in which the virtues of purity, honesty, self-denial, and charity are apparent. These converts contribute liberally out of their poverty to Christian objects, specially for the advancement of Christianity in their own country, in some regions contributing 6_s._ per head per annum. These Christian societies are constantly showing an increasing disposition to help themselves by the building of church edifices, as at Paoning Fu and elsewhere, and by contributing the entire support of not a few of their own pastors.

A large number of these converts are earnest and successful propagandists, and the very large increase in the number of Christians during the last five years is mainly owing to the zeal, earnestness, and devotion of Chinese converts, both men and women, who owe their conversion and instruction, as well as guidance and inspiration, to the foreign teachers. In Manchuria a few years ago the senior missionary told me that out of between three thousand and four thousand converts he estimated that not more than twenty had received Christianity directly from the European missionaries, and the same proportion holds good with regard to the 8875 inquirers at the present date. In Che-kiang the present Bishop of Victoria estimated the number of converts through the work of Chinese as 80 per cent. of the whole.

These societies, in the beginning very small, and numbering from ten up to over four hundred members, are gradually crystallising into brotherhoods, with a very strong bond of union and definite aims of their own. They show in a marked degree the strong Chinese tendency to combination and association, and may be regarded as guilds. At present among the communicants there is a strong desire to conserve the purity of the churches by a careful exercise of discipline. Members who fall back into evil ways, as many do, are “suspended,” and if incorrigible are sloughed off, and it certainly would not be possible for such abuses as disgraced the church of Corinth to exist in the infant churches of China.

In brief these Christian societies are earnest in propagandism, zealous for purity and discipline, liberal in their contributions, desirous for instruction, docile and teachable, and apparently increasingly anxious to translate Christian doctrine into righteous living. These bodies in very many places are slowly exercising an influence in favour of righteousness, and are thus among the many influences which are tending to undermine the old superstitions.

If China is to be Christianised, or even largely leavened by Christianity, it must inevitably be by native agency under foreign instruction and guidance. The foreigner remains a foreigner in his imperfect and often grotesque use of the language, in his inability to comprehend Chinese modes of thinking and acting, and in a hundred other ways, while a well-instructed Chinese teacher knows his countrymen and what will appeal to them, how to make “points,” and how to clinch an argument by a popular quotation from their own classics. He knows their weakness and strength, their devious ways and crooked motives, and their unspeakable darkness and superstition, and is not likely to be either too suspicious or too confiding. He presents Christianity without the Western flavour. It is in the earnest enthusiasm of the Chinese converts for the propagation of the faith that the great hope for China lies.

Until now Christianity has made very slow progress. Among the special obstacles are: First, the national vanity, and the contempt for anything introduced by the foreign barbarians. Second, the posthumous influence of Confucius, whose moral teaching, negative and defective as it is on some points, is regarded as final, and his maxims as perfect in their adaptation to the needs of society and government for all time. Third, the Chinese language itself, with its absence of an alphabet, the peculiar inflections and tones, the guttural and aspirated modulations which must be carefully observed, and the necessity of creating a vocabulary which shall rationally express the Christian ideas, and yet not be offensive to a critical and literary people. Fourth, the carefulness and universality of home education in superstitious and idolatrous beliefs and practices, children being taught from early infancy that reverence for the divinities of the Chinese Pantheon, shown according to established forms, is necessary to success in life.

Fifth, greater than all these special obstacles combined, is that of ancestor-worship, the actual and universal cult of the Empire. To abandon idolatrous worship and practices is easy, but withdrawal from the worship of the ancestral tablets, with its rites and sacrifices, brands a man as a reprobate and a brute. These rites represent reverence, sacredness, and filial piety; they have the sanction of immemorial usage and of the earliest memories of home, and the first act of worship recorded is the worship of ancestors by the Emperor Shun on his accession, in the dawn of Chinese history.

The practice probably took its rise in a tender and beautiful filial feeling, but apparently it has come to be largely inspired by fear. A Chinese truly “passes the time of his sojourning here in fear,” and is in slavery not only to the terror of a dim and demon-haunted future, but to the present dread of the evils wherewith he may be afflicted in this life by the malevolence of the dissatisfied spirits of his ancestors. Dr. Yates, a very careful student of things Chinese, in an able paper on ancestor-worship, states that, including the cost of the festivals for the destitute dead, the enormous sum of 151,752,000 dollars is annually expended by the Chinese in quieting the spirits of the departed, and securing the living from their malignant action. If this worship ever dies, it will die hard.

Islam is absolutely intolerant of every form of ancestor-worship. The Roman Catholic missions, as my readers are aware, were agitated by a controversy as to concessions on this subject from 1610 to 1758, when Pope Benedict XIV. rejected all compromise. Protestant missions take the same course.

While making careful inquiries into mission work, both from the workers and from outsiders, and comparing the present status and conduct of Chinese converts with what they were when I was in China twenty years ago, I formed certain opinions on Protestant missions in China, which I now place briefly before my readers. At this time missions constitute so important a factor in the awakening of the empire, that no sensible or thoughtful person can ignore them without sacrificing his reputation for both sense and thoughtfulness. If I venture to write of myself at all in connection with the subject, it is but to say that I am not an enthusiast regarding foreign missions, but soberly believe that to “teach all nations” is the path of duty and of hope.

During the earlier period of my eight years of Asiatic travel the subject was of little or no interest to me. I may even have enjoyed the cheap sneers at missions and missionaries which often pass for wit in Anglo-Asiatic communities, among persons who have never given the work and its methods one half-hour of serious attention and investigation, and in travelling, wherever possible, I gave mission stations a wide berth.

On my later journeys, however, which brought me often for months at a time into touch with the daily life of the peoples, their condition even at the best impressed me as being so deplorable all round, that I became a convert to the duty of using the great means by which it can be elevated. To pass on to these nations the blessings which we owe to Christianity—our eternal hope, our knowledge of the Divine Fatherhood, our Christian ideals of manhood and womanhood, our best conceptions of the sanctities of domestic life and of the duties involved in social relationships, our political liberties, the position of women, the incorruptible majesty of our equal laws, the reformatory nature of our punishments, the public opinion permeated by Christianity which sustains right and condemns wrong, and a thousand things besides, which have come to us through centuries of the “Jesus Religion”—is undoubtedly our bounden duty. It is surely the height of unchristian selfishness to sit down contentedly among our own good things, and practically to regard China merely as an area for trade. Is it not also the height of disloyalty and disobedience to our nominal Master, whose last command, ringing down through centuries of selfishness, we have been satisfied to leave unfulfilled?

I was influenced not so much by seeing the good work done by missionaries, as the tremendous need for it and the hopelessness of the religious systems of Asia. Several of the Asiatic faiths, and notably Buddhism, started with noble conceptions and a morality far in advance of their age. But the good has been mainly lost out of them in their passage down the centuries, and Buddhism in China, aiming at eclecticism, absorbed so much of the dæmonism, nature-worship, and heathenism of the country, that in the number and puerility of its superstitions, its alliance with sorcery, its temples crowded with monstrous and grotesque idols, the immorality of its priests, and the absence of the teaching of righteousness, it is now much on a level with the idolatries of barbarous nations. There is nothing to arrest the further downward descent of these systems, so effete, and yet so powerful as interwoven with the whole social life of the nation. _There is no resurrection power in any one of them_, and to the men who here and there are athirst for righteousness, and are groping after Him “who is not far from every one of us,” they offer neither guidance nor help.

That there are such seekers is certain. Among the many “secret societies” of China, a “good few” are mainly religious, and a great number of the Christian converts in North China have been in their membership. An attempt to attain righteousness is their characteristic, and something may be learned from them of self-denial and aspiration. Their efforts all take more or less of an ascetic direction.

Among them are “Vegetarians,” who abstain from meat with the object of “rectifying the heart, accumulating merit, and thus avoiding calamities in this world and retributive pains in the next.” Several others are pledged to abstain from gambling and the use of opium, wine, and tobacco. The chief teaching of another is the duty of maintaining a patient spirit under injuries.

The books of the religious secret societies contain the best maxims and the highest moral teaching of “The Three Religions.” They exhort to chastity, benevolence, carefulness in speech, self-denial, good works, the _conservation of the mental energies by rest and reflection_, the cultivation of the heart, and to much besides which is good. In alliance with the good are idolatrous rites, incantations, divination, and many grossly superstitious and puerile practices. It is believed that even the best among these societies are not altogether free from seditious tendencies, _i.e._, the accomplishment of reform by destruction. But after making due allowance for what is foolish and evil, it is evident that in these unsatisfied spiritual instincts and cravings after righteousness, and above all in the substitution of a dissatisfied and earnest spirit for the self-satisfied complacency of the Confucianist, and the stolid materialism of the average Chinese, Christianity has allies not to be despised.

Up to this time (1899) the slow success which has been won has been almost entirely among the lower classes, and it has not been possible, by the methods hitherto pursued, to reach the _literati_, who in China are the leaders of a people whose reverence for letters is phenomenal.

Of the 2458 Protestant missionaries, including wives (many of whom are incapacitated for work by maternal duties), accredited to China, a large number are always at home “on furlough.” Promising Christian work is often broken up by the departure of the missionary. A substitute may or may not be appointed, but the “personal equation” counts for much in China as elsewhere. The force available for actual work ought not to include the large number of new missionaries, who must inevitably spend the first year or two in learning to speak Chinese, during which period they are useful chiefly by lives of consistent righteousness. Throughout my long journeys I never saw a mission station, except perhaps Paoning Fu, which was not undermanned, _i.e._, in which mission work was not seriously crippled and denied its natural expansion by lack of men.

In this time of inquiry into Western religion and science it becomes more and more important that missionaries, both men and _women_, should study the difficult language carefully, so as to fit themselves for conversation with the _literati_, and not be content with a limited command of the colloquial speech of coolies. It is being recognised in most influential quarters that if our trade is to expand, clerks and others going into mercantile life in China must begin the study of Chinese here under competent Chinese teachers. It might possibly be desirable for intending missionaries to do the same, and it would have the advantage of testing in each case the capacity for learning a difficult language, the incapacity being under present methods only discovered when it is too late to draw back. It appears very important that medical missionaries should have an undisturbed year after arriving in China for the study of the language.

Women’s work has grown, and is growing so rapidly in China that its regulation needs serious consideration. Admirable as much of it is, and might be, it is beset with special difficulties. The fact of a young unmarried woman living anywhere but under her father’s roof, exposes her character to the grossest imputations, which are hurled at her in the streets, and which can only be lived down by scrupulous carefulness. The Chinese etiquette, which prescribes the conduct seemly for women, and limits the freedom of social intercourse between the sexes, certainly tends to propriety, and though to our thinking tiresome, no young foreign woman attempting to teach a foreign religion can violate its leading rules without injury to her work.

For instance, it is improper for a woman to “ride” in an open chair, to receive men visitors at her house, or to shake hands with men, or to walk through the street of a town or village or to visit at native houses unattended by a middle-aged Chinese woman. It is not only improper but scandalous for a woman to be seen in a tight bodice, or any other fashion which shows her figure, and a foreign girl lays herself open to remarks which I scarcely think she would like to hear, when she appears in a fly-away hat, bent up and bent down, on which birds, insects, feathers, grasses, and flowers have been dumped down indiscriminately! The Mission Board of one large and successful Mission has found it desirable to issue rules for missionaries regarding dress and etiquette, and the China Inland Mission everywhere, and the Church Missionary Society missionaries in SZE CHUAN have solved the difficulty by adopting Chinese costume, the only Oriental dress which Europeans can wear with seemliness and dignity. I think it would add much to the safety of female missionaries, and to the respect in which they are held, if those missionary societies which object to Chinese costume would agree upon neat, simple uniforms for summer and winter, fulfilling the Chinese demand for propriety, and the European demand for tastefulness, and which should indicate at once that the wearer belongs to a large and important international union, and cannot be insulted with impunity.

Again it is necessary for young women to remember that a yellow skin makes no difference, and that any familiarity of manner or carelessness in deportment, which would be unsuitable here, is ten times more unsuitable in the case of Chinese men, such as servants, teachers, and “native helpers.” In one province in which lady missionaries are specially numerous the violations of etiquette by some of them have been regarded as so likely to lead to outbreaks that the attention of our Foreign Office has been called to the subject. The openings for the work of sensible “godly” women are very great, but as a large proportion of those who go out are young and inexperienced, and the number is increasing, it is desirable that the whole subject should be reconsidered, and that women’s work and general conduct should have the advantage of experienced and effectual supervision for the protection of the workers, and the prevention of those hindrances to the work which arise out of ignorance and inexperience, and in a few cases out of self-conceit and self-will.

Having ventured on these criticisms and suggestions, I must add that much of the wisest, most loving, most self-denying, and most successful work that I saw done in China was done by women.

My earliest ideas of missionary work were taken from a picture which represented a white man standing under a tree, preaching to an earnest, quiet, and dark-visaged crowd. Crowds gather round the foreign preacher in China, but this is often a temporary phase, with curiosity for its leading motive. His appearance, mistakes in speech, and attitudes are satirised, jeered at, and mimicked. One of the most popular theatrical performances in Shanghai a few years ago was a clever farce, representing a foreign missionary preaching to a crowd of Chinese.

Preaching is not a Chinese mode of instruction. Confucianism, still the great force in China, never had a preacher, and was propagated solely by books. It is said that there is not a lecture-hall in the empire. The Chinese methods of influencing are chiefly literary, catechetical, and conversational. The results of preaching have not been what was once hoped for, nor what they have been in some other countries. Many missionaries have told me that even the Chinese preaching in the “street chapels” is not fruitful in results.

It is possible that the introduction of Western modes of evangelising, not applicable to China, was at least premature, and has been the cause of much failure and disappointment. The foreign element, whether in methods, church architecture, house building, or the ignoring of Chinese custom, though partly inevitable, must always tend to represent Christianity as a “foreign religion,” and to perpetuate it but as a sickly exotic. It is, I think, of great importance that Christianity should ally itself with all that is not evil in the national life, that it should uphold Chinese nationality, that it should incorporate Chinese methods of instruction with our own, and conserve all customs which are not contrary to its spirit. The teachings of experience have not been thrown away, and many missionaries have come to see that these are the lines of progress.

Those competent to judge have no doubt that Christianity is about to make great progress in China. With this, many questions already emerging will come to the front, and among the foremost is that of native agency in foreign pay. There is on one side the certainty that China can only be Christianised by the Chinese, and on the other the risks connected with the worldly or mercenary element, which have been fatal to many such persons whose sincerity had not been suspected. Here again experience is teaching useful lessons, one being that Christianity is never so extensively and rapidly propagated as by the spontaneous efforts and renovated lives of private Christians.

Among other questions are: How far the differences between Western churches are to be perpetuated in China; the place of the Chinese classics and of English in missionary schools; the obligation of the Sabbath; the attitude of Christianity to certain Chinese customs, and to any modified form of ancestor-worship; social intercourse between foreigners and Chinese; the social and pecuniary position of a native pastorate; the self-government of churches; and in Anglican missions the retention of the Prayer Book, as it at present stands, as the sole manual for public worship.

In conclusion I think that there is now an “open door” for the gospel in China, and that the prospect for Christianity is fairer than at any former period, but that if the Christian nations fail to realise their obligations to enter that door promptly and in force, with an army of earnest and well-equipped teachers, China may follow the example of Japan, and accept Western civilisation, while rejecting the Christian religion.

“Talk,” said Mr. Gladstone on one occasion, “about the question of the day; there is but one question, and that is the gospel. It can and will correct everything needing correction.”

It may be that the gospel will yet bring about the regeneration of China.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

The subjects of our political and trade relations with China have been so ably and exhaustively treated by Lord Charles Beresford, M.P., and Mr. Colquhoun, and have been threshed out by so many other writers, that in these brief remarks I shall chiefly confine myself to the Chinese people and to my impressions of them, received in fifteen months of journeyings in three of the most important years in modern Chinese history.[63]

I doubt very much whether China is “breaking up.” _If_ she breaks up it will be owing to the policy of the great European nations in making her “lose face,” and thereby weakening the authority of the Central Government over the provinces, local risings and possible disintegrations being the result. The “sphere of influence” policy, if pursued in earnest, would undoubtedly break up the empire.

In the three years in which I was travelling, off and on, in China, the Dragon Throne reeled, but righted itself, and the Government survived the Japanese war, the heavy indemnity, the loss of the suzerainty of Korea, and the aggressions of Russia. It extinguished, in blood, the serious Mohammedan rebellion in KANSUH, and has lately brought about the collapse of the rebellion in SZE CHUAN. The bond of union which connects the provinces with each other and with Peking has survived all these mishaps, and if it is broken, I believe it will be by foreign interference, and by the shifting and opportunist policy, enormous ambitions, and ill-concealed rivalries of certain foreign powers.

Nor do I believe that China is “in decay.” I have travelled more than 8000 miles in the empire, and have seen, in some regions, roads, canals, temples,[64] and some ancient public works, falling into disrepair. The Oriental throughout Asia prefers construction to renovation, and alongside of these decaying works there are new temples, new pagodas, new and handsome bridges, new _pai-fangs_, new bunds, and new works, rather of private than public origin.

The reader who has followed the foregoing chapters with any degree of interest can scarcely think that SZE CHUAN, at least, is in decay. Commercial and industrial energy is not decaying, the vast fleets of junks are not rotting in harbours and reaches; industry, thrift, resourcefulness, and the complete organisation both of labour and commerce, meet the traveller at every turn. Mercantile credit stands high, contracts are kept, labour is docile, teachable, and intelligent, its earnings are secure, and, on the whole, law and order prevail.

Nor is it like “decay” that in 1898—in spite of a political situation full of menace, of sporadic rebellions which largely checked business in their localities, of the serious news from Peking in September, which disorganised the trade of the northern ports, and of the disasters in connection with the Yellow River—the elasticity was such that the value of the import trade exceeded all previous records, while that of the export trade exceeded that of every previous year except 1897, the total volume of trade being the highest on record.

There was no export of silver, but a net import of Hk. Tls. 4,722,025, and there was no scarcity of it in any part of the country. China met the whole of her obligations without any depletion of her currency, and imported nothing that she did not obtain in exchange for exports.[65] The importance of stimulating the Chinese export trade is apt to be overlooked. China will only purchase from foreign countries that for which she can pay with her own products. The verdict of the Inspector-General of Maritime Customs in China on the commercial situation for 1898 is, “No doubt the Government is hard pressed for funds, but _the country grows wealthier every year_.”[66]

Among the reasons given for the alleged “decay” of China is its “over-population.” It is true that there are seriously congested areas, even in SZE CHUAN, but if we take 400,000,000, the extreme estimate of the population, it is but ten times that of Great Britain, while the area of the empire is from sixteen to eighteen times as great.

What is “in decay” is the administration of government. The people are straight, but officialism is corrupt.[67]

The subject has been fully dwelt upon in other books, with which I suppose my readers to be acquainted. The theory of the Chinese Government is one of the best ever devised by the wit of man. Against every possible abuse apparent safeguards were provided. The enjoyment of property and life was secured to the people. The laws in the main were just, concise, and of equal pressure. The right of rising against a corrupt and oppressive official was guaranteed. Literary examinations were made the entrance to official life. Inferior birth was no bar to the attainment of high position. The laws of the country embodied the highest teaching of political ethics which it had received. The patriarchal theory of government was never so systematised, or acted upon for so long, and with so much consistency. The ethical teaching and the laws based upon it remain, and the strongest power in China to-day is Confucius; but the admirable theory of government has proved weak in presence of the neglected factor of the downward tendency of human nature in a pagan nation. The infamies of Chinese administration to-day have been riveted upon China by centuries of political retrogression, and the gradual lowering of the standard of public virtue in the absence of a wholesome public opinion. Certain forms of bribery, corruption, and peculation have obtained the force of custom, seven-tenths of the revenue is arrested by the “three hands” of officials, all sums allotted for public works, repairs, and military and naval equipment, suffer enormous depletion _en route_ to their destinations, so that in the Japanese war “a straight people with a corrupt Government” were easily subdued by “a corrupt people with a straight Government.”[68]

One of the heaviest indictments against the system is, that under it it is hardly possible for a good man to be rigidly honest, and there are good men: and there are mandarins who, after a long and laborious period of office, actually live and die poor. A well-meaning man, finding himself entangled in the meshes of this system, is greatly to be pitied. Custom is all in favour of peculation, and however much such men would welcome a way of escape, to break with custom is as hard as to break off the opium habit. Another difficulty besets the well-intentioned man—his knowledge that his best efforts will certainly be frustrated by the unscrupulous clerks and retainers of his _yamen_.

In Chapter XXIII. I just touched on the very laborious life of a mandarin, who has to perform the work of six men, and rarely gets a holiday. For this amount of work he is virtually unpaid, far more than his wretchedly insufficient salary being expended on the necessary state of his office. These nominal salaries are the deadly upas tree, which has cast its fatal shadow over Chinese official life. They are the _crux_ of the situation. They make peculation and corruption all but an absolute necessity. Short periods of office, paying for appointments, the evil custom of making presents to official superiors, the practice that, after paying into the Imperial Exchequer the fixed quota of taxation for his district, the magistrate can appropriate all that he can squeeze beyond it, subject to liberal gifts to the high officials of his province, are only a few of the evils of the Chinese administrative system. It is chiefly out of this margin squeezed out of the people that the fortunes of the higher officials are made.[69]

Every writer on China exposes the iniquities of the system, and they come more or less to the ears and under the observation of every traveller. They affect a fourth of the human race, and have brought the most ancient of existing empires into the position of a “sick man”—helpless, appealing, with voracious Western nations gnawing at his extremities, and prepared to prey upon his vitals.

But China bristles with contradictions. The “sick man” ought to be “in decay,” but he is not. His innate cheeriness is scarcely clouded by our repeated assertions that he ought to be dead, and he faces the future which we prophesy for him without misgiving! On the whole, peace, order, and a fair amount of prosperity prevail throughout the empire. The gains of labour are secure, taxation, even with the squeezes attending it, is rarely oppressive in the country, and in the towns is extremely light. The phrase “ground down” does not apply to the Chinese peasant. There is complete religious toleration. Guilds, trades unions, and other combinations carry out their systems unimpeded, and the Chinese genius for association is absolutely unfettered. The Chinese practically in actual life are one of the freest peoples on earth!

The reader may be staggered by what appears a monstrous paradox, in face of the opinions regarding the infamies of administration previously expressed, but if a single statement is applicable to the whole empire it is this, that freedom is the birthright of the people, that they possess “inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and that China is one of the most democratic countries on earth. The Government, feeble and evasive in its dealings with foreigners, when it sets its mind on something among its own people, is quite capable of carrying out its will, and is not nearly so impotent as many suppose. Yet it habitually plays only a most minute part in the economy of national life, and a Chinese may live and die without any other contact with it than the payment of land-tax. He is free in all trades and industries: to make money and to keep it: to emigrate and to return with his gains: free to rise from the peasant’s hut to place and dignity: to become a millionaire, and confer princely gifts upon his province: free in his religion and his amusements: and in his social and commercial life.

I have not space, knowledge, or ability to enter into the inwardness of these extraordinary contradictions, and would only remark that we have to deal in China not with a mass of downtrodden serfs, but with a nation of free men.

I may be permitted, however, very diffidently to point out a few of the reasons which, in my opinion, militate against the evils of administration, and tend to the stability of the country. First among these is the village system. In China the unit is not the individual but the family, indivisible and sacred, the members of which are bound to each other in life and death by indissoluble ties, of the strength of which we cannot form a conception. Villages consist of groups of such families, with their headmen and elders, who are responsible for each individual, the step above them being the _hsien_, or district magistrate, who may be regarded as the administrative unit. The Chinese have a genius for self-government, and are by no means the “dumb, driven cattle” which some suppose them to be. The villages are self-governing, and no official dares to trench on their hereditary privileges. Every successive dynasty has found itself bound to protect them in these, and no “Son of Heaven” who called them in question could occupy the Dragon Throne for six months.

These privileges, which by established custom have become actual rights, consist primarily in the complete control of local affairs, the possession of lands, and absolute freedom for trade and industry. Among the many advantages of the village system is, that it enables villagers in countless civil cases to avoid the serious evils of litigation in the _yamens_ by the simple method of referring them to arbitration before their headmen and elders.

Among other causes which tend to counterbalance the evils of the administration, is the system of strict surveillance and mutual responsibility, under which no man stands alone, and which as a vast network holds China together. This has its own evils, one of which is _mutual distrust_, which has, however, the good result of preventing men from combining intelligently against the Government. The system makes government easy, and certainly does not tend to disintegration.

Besides these there are the recognised right of rebellion when grievances become intolerable; the execution of a species of lynch law on culpable officials, which often takes the place of memorials to the Throne, and courts of appeal; a certain dread on the part of magistrates of being reported for corruption or inefficiency by the many spies of the Central Government, or by the Censors, who, though said not to be altogether free from venality, can, on occasion, be most remarkably outspoken; the general education of the people in the principles on which government is based; the genius for association which gives strength to the weak; and the universal training both at home and school in “The Five Duties of Man,” which are: (1) Loyalty to the Sovereign, (2) piety to parents, (3) submissiveness to elders, (4) harmony between husband and wife, (5) fidelity to friends.[70]

This is the empire which we speak of “partitioning” and “breaking up,” with as little emotion as if it were an ant’s nest, with all its singular contradictions, and emphatic antagonisms of good and evil.

There is a wide difference between bullying, in diplomatic language “applying strong pressure,” and making righteous and politic demands upon China. Nothing could be better for herself than the drastic reforms suggested by Lord C. Beresford, but some of them involve what I think would be an unwarrantable interference with her internal organisation. Among righteous demands may certainly be placed the fulfilment of treaty obligations—the giving security to the lives and property of foreigners throughout the empire, which can only be attained by the formation of an efficient army, or _gendarmerie_, well disciplined, drilled, armed, and paid, and _mobile_—giving foreigners the right to live for trade purposes in the interior (a right only conceded by Japan in July, 1899), and an equable rearrangement of _likin_ and _loti-shui_.[71]

_Likin_ and _loti-shui_ are obnoxious taxes, and hamper trade effectively, and the abuses of the system are very great, but abrupt and sweeping changes would be very dangerous. It must be remembered that the provincial governments have lost seriously through the operations of the Imperial Maritime Customs (see p. 155), and rely mainly on _likin_ for their revenue, that its abolition would involve a resort to direct taxation, which would be intolerable to a people accustomed to indirect, and would certainly lead to very serious risings in the West River and Yangtze valleys. Official needs, established custom, and the relations of the masses to custom, render the forcing of abrupt fiscal changes of this nature upon the Chinese most impolitic, risking the disorganisation and break up of China.

By bullying the Central Government it is made to “lose face” with its subjects, and its authority is by so much weakened. The value of our treaties absolutely depends on the power of the Government to give effect to them. The sole security of the Chinese bondholder, and for the sums invested, or to be invested in the railroads of the future, is the integrity and cohesion of the Chinese Empire. Touch this integrity, whether by active claims for “spheres of influence,” with consequent disintegration, the enforced abolition of _likin_, or any policy of pressure, and our treaties will be but waste paper. With regard to most arrangements, however desirable in the way of reform they may be, the word “insist,” pointing to coercion, should be blotted out of the vocabulary of discussion.

I am still a believer in the justice and expediency of the “Open Door” policy, as opposed to what I think is the fatal alternative policy of “spheres of influence.” Many who would “rush” reforms in China, and are impatient of delay, and are perhaps bitten by the “lust of domination,” assert that it is too late for it, but I fail to see the reasons for such a “counsel of despair.” The Marquess of Salisbury, at the end of June, 1898, said: “If I am asked what our policy in China is, my answer is very simple. It is to maintain the Chinese Empire, to prevent it falling into ruins, to invite it into paths of reform, and to give it every assistance which we are able to give it, to perfect its defence or to increase its commercial prosperity. _By so doing we shall be aiding its cause and our own._”[72] This announcement of policy has not been recalled.

In the meantime it is impossible for China, pressed on every side, and vaguely conscious that she stands at the “parting of the ways,” that “the old order” is changing, and that she is in the grip of new forces, to collect herself with a view to the reforms from which she cannot hope to escape, and she falls back on her old idea of statesmanship—the playing off one foreign country against another. After a career of empire of two thousand years, in which she has increased in wealth and population up to the present time, she finds herself at the dawn of a new century, confronted by problems of which her classics and her experience offer no solution, and the greatest of these is the FOREIGNER.

In concluding this chapter, it is worth while to consider whether there are any indications of reform from within, and whether the phrase, “The awakening of China,” represents fact or not.

Our mechanical inventions, steamers, railroads, gas, telegraphs, electric light, steam machinery, dredgers, artillery, torpedoes, arms of precision, submarine telegraphy, steam printing, photography—our surgery, the beauty and “up-keep” of our foreign settlements, and their admirable municipal government, and our obvious wealth, have all been emissaries knocking the conceit out of those who come in contact with them. Chinese now work telegraph lines, own and run steam launches in large numbers, enter our hospitals as medical students, and take admirable photographs, nearly perfect in _technique_, only lacking in artistic feeling. Factories owned and run by Chinese are springing up here and there, and may eventually be successful. One of the great passenger lines on the Lower Yangtze belongs to the “Chinese Merchants’ Company.”

Inland, for many years, foreign families have been living lives elsewhere described—of different nationalities, but all worshippers of one invisible God. Such persons have introduced into remote regions kerosene lamps—which are doing much to alter social life in China, soap, lucifer matches and vesta lights, condensed milk and tinned provisions, sewing machines—enormously adopted by tailors, and much else, the utility of all of which has been recognised, and which have compelled the Chinese to admit the ability of the “barbarians.”

It is known, at least to the Chinese within fifty miles of the coast, and up the Yangtze, on which Japanese steam lines are now running, that the Japanese, who received from themselves the Chinese classics centuries ago, have adopted the political and legal systems, industries, and naval and military methods of foreigners; that they have a straight Government, which no foreign power dares to bully; that they have been received on equal terms into the family of nations, and that their methods of warfare, before which China collapsed, were foreign methods. The fact that a yellow people, venerating and teaching their own classics, with a social order founded on Confucian principles, and with Chinese as its official language, has adopted, to a great extent, Western civilisation, and with manifest advantage, has produced a remarkable effect since the war.

Last, but very far from being least, as it affects the brain of the country and its natural leaders, is the circulation of the scientific, historical, and Christian literature of the West. This is the Western ferment which may “leaven the whole lump.” This circulation received an enormous impulse when the reform edicts of the Emperor were promulgated, making a knowledge of Western learning imperative on students, and has not been greatly affected by the subsequent retrograde movement. It cannot be doubted that those edicts, premature and unwise as some of them were, were the direct result of the foreign literature which the Emperor had previously been reading with avidity.

The larger portion of this literature, which I believe is destined to reform and transform China, has been published by a society founded twelve years ago by some of the leading men in China, and named the “Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge.” Sir Robert Hart, G.C.M.G., is its president in China, and Mr. Timothy Richards, an enthusiast about the language and people, and an optimist about the future of the empire, is its secretary and inspiring spirit.

The literature for which the demand is now greater than the supply, consists of distinctly Christian books, such as _Butler’s Analogy_; _a Life of Christ_; _Christianity, and the Progress of Nations_; scientific books, as on _Agricultural Chemistry_ and _Astronomy_; books on economic subjects, such as _Productive and Non-Productive Labour_, _The Relation of Education to National Progress_, etc., and some of our best standard books are now in circulation, together with such special literature as _Essays for the Times_, _The Renaissance of China_, _Progress of China’s Neighbours_, a periodical called _A Review of the Times_, and various others. The drift of the desire for knowledge is shown by the very large sale of Mackenzie’s _History of the Nineteenth Century_, and of a _History of the Japanese War_; _Sixty Years of Queen Victoria’s Reign_ being also much in demand.

These books and many others, circulating largely among the _literati_, at once creating and expressing aspirations, all present in some form or other that higher ideal which produced those reformers, greatly led by Kang Yen-Wei, who advocated political, commercial, educational, and religious reform in 1898, rendering it memorable in Chinese history as a year in which men showed that the welfare of their country was dearer to them than life itself.

A few instances taken at random show how the Western leaven is working. Large sums have been subscribed by the Chinese for the object of teaching Western languages and learning, specially in the ports. Two wealthy Chinese offered to raise 10,000 dollars for the enlargement of the Women’s Hospital in Shanghai, if Dr. Reifsnyder, the lady medical missionary, would consent to teach Western medicine to Chinese girls. A Cantonese, one of the managers of the China Merchants’ Co., was so impressed by Mr. Richards’ translation of Mackenzie’s _History of the Nineteenth Century_, that he bought a hundred copies, and sent them to the leading mandarins in Peking.

A HUNAN gentleman, visiting Shanghai two years ago, met with the “C.L.S.” magazine, _Review of the Times_, and was so impressed with its helpfulness to China, that he ordered two hundred copies, and distributed them monthly in HUNAN to those who had specially opposed foreigners and Christianity. These men, in their turn, ordered a complete set of the “C.L.S.” books, and read them for two years in order to be sure of their contents. Recently the Literary Chancellor of the province wrote to the “C.L.S.” to the effect that China must reform, and on the lines indicated in the Society’s publications, and in the name of the governor and gentry of HUNAN invited the Chinese editor to become a professor in the college of the provincial capital.[73]

The volume on _Agricultural Chemistry_ has been very largely read. Early in 1899 the Viceroy of Nanking and others raised £50,000 for an agricultural college, and invited Mr. Bentley, the author of the book, an American missionary, to be its head. The Viceroy in Central China, Chang-Chih-Tung, whose views on the use of opium I have previously quoted, actually sympathised with the Yangtze anti-foreign riots in 1891, but by 1894 had been so profoundly influenced by the study of Western literature that he sent a large donation to the “C.L.S.,” and has lately published a book in which he strongly advocates the immediate adoption of a modern system of education.

It is not alone among the older men that our literature is producing marked effects here and there, but the literary students in considerable numbers are fired with the desire for Western learning. Fifteen hundred applied for entrance to the new Peking University, of which the learned Rev. W. Martin, author of _A Cycle of Cathay_, is principal. Occasionally foreign literature produces almost grotesque effects. A _Hsien_ magistrate, having read Dr. Faber’s _Civilization, East and West_, was much impressed by the chapter on our Western treatment of prisoners, and at once set his own to work at spinning, weaving, and basket-making, to the intense amusement of the retainers of the _yamen_.

In SZE CHUAN I saw few, if any, indications of the awakening which undoubtedly exists. A foreign traveller, whether he speak Chinese or not, does not see below the surface, and the province is far away from the centres in which the Western leaven is working most energetically, but in several places where I halted the mandarin sent to inquire if I had any “foreign books?” Kuei-chow is one of the most anti-foreign of the provinces, and it is noteworthy that lately her governor has sent to the “C.L.S.” for 1000 dollars’ worth of Western literature.

I think that there is no doubt that the leaven of Western thought is working surely though slowly among the literary class, and that the reform movement, scotched, but not killed, by the strong measures of the Empress Dowager, grew out of it.

Two causes favour the spread of Western literature; first that the four hundred millions of the empire possess one written language, and second, that there are 200 examination centres in China, and that at each, from 5000 to 10,000 students, the mandarins, lawyers, and leaders of the future, a million in all, are under examination every year. Our best literature, and our Christian literature, supplied to these centres reaches the most influential homes in the country. Mr. Archibald Little, the pioneer of steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze, and himself a Chinese scholar, strongly urges the supply of “C.L.S.” literature to all these centres. He considers that the mental revolution now proceeding, and the reform movement, are largely due to the influence of books, and even says that in the circulation of Western literature he sees the great hope for the “Open Door!”

That irresistible forces are beginning to drive China out of her conceit and seclusion is evident. Ten years ago there were only two or three papers in the vernacular besides the official _Peking Gazette_. To-day there are over seventy, and native journalism is actively developing. Through the press the Young China Party—the creation of Anglo-Chinese schools and foreign influence, chiefly in the ports—gives expression to those feelings of unrest and discontent which its wider outlook on affairs produces. Through it the younger _literati_, awakened to a new conception of patriotism by contact with Western thought, denounce the ignorance and corruption of the magistracy, and urge as a remedy the introduction of mathematics and political economy into the provincial examinations! The Viceroy, ChangChih-Tung, not only founded a paper “which was to engage the sympathies of the literary class in the work of progress and reform, and to interest its readers in questions of international and general importance,”[74] but made its support compulsory in all the _yamens_ and libraries in the _Hu_ provinces. Its staff is said to be composed of men who combine broad views with classical scholarship, and it is reputed to have great influence with the upper classes, even though the reforming Viceroy has had to withdraw his official support from it.

It is too early to write of the probable influence of the coming railroads. It is easy to take an exaggerated view, but undoubtedly rapid communication is a great foe to darkness and ignorance. Everywhere there are indications of a change in the “classes” which lead the “masses.” There is a Chinese saying, that “if you wish to irrigate a piece of land you must first carry the water to the highest level, so, if you wish to enlighten a nation, you must begin with its leaders.” Very important and valuable inquiries have been made into all subjects connected with trade; but this mental change, which will probably exercise an enormous influence on trade and our relations with China, has been singularly overlooked.

It is perhaps best that there should be no abrupt rupture with the past. The reform edicts, though abrogated, have kindled a flame; and though there may be suspended progress, China can never really go back any more, for the forces which have been set in motion have never yet suffered defeat. “The mills of God grind slowly,” but they grind inexorably. Let us be patient with our ancient ally, and “invite” rather than bully her into “paths of reform.” I fear much that the desperate determination of the European nations to secure her potentialities of trade by fair means or foul, may be driving her to her doom, and that in the clash and turmoil the symptoms of an increasing desire for reform from within—a reform which would slowly give us all we can righteously ask—are being overlooked or ignored.

Into her archaic and unreformed Orientalism the Western leaven has fallen for good or evil. Rudely awakened by the Japanese victories out of her long sleep, China, half dismayed and wholly dazed, with much loss of “face,” and shaken confidence in the methods of diplomacy which have served her so well in the past, finds herself confronted by an array of powerful, grasping, ambitious, and not always over-scrupulous powers, bent, it may be, on over-reaching her and each other, ringing with barbarian hands the knell of the customs and polity which are the legacy of Confucius, clamouring for ports and concessions, and bewildering her with reforms, suggestions, and demands, of which she sees neither the expediency nor the necessity.

In this turmoil, and with the European nations thundering at her gates, it is impossible for China to attempt any reforms which would not from the nature of the case be piecemeal and superficial. The reform of an administration like hers needs the prolonged and careful consideration of the best minds in the empire, with such skilled and disinterested foreign advice as was given by Sir Harry Parkes to Japan when she embarked on her new career.

It must be remembered that the remodelling of the administrative system of China is beset with difficulties which have not existed in any other country, and which are accentuated by the vast population and area of the empire. Chinese statesmen (if there be such) have to consider what reforms could be carried out with the approval of the masses, _i.e._, without bringing about a revolution. The very abuses of administration have gained something of the sanctity which attends on custom among this singular people. It is most important that those who have to deal with Chinese affairs should be able to obtain such information as would enable them to make a just estimate of the strength and probable diffusion of the desire for reform among the _literati_, at whose feet the masses lie with a genuine reverence.

China is certainly at the dawn of a new era. Whether the twentieth century shall place her where she ought to be, in the van of Oriental nations, or whether it shall witness her disintegration and decay, depends very largely on the statesmanship and influence of Great Britain.

ITINERARY

_Li._[75]
Wan Hsien to San-tsan-pu 65
Ting-tsiao 63
Liang-shan Hsien 50
Wen-kia-cha 60
Chai-shih-kiao 60
Hsia-shan-po 73
Kiu Hsien 60
Ching-sze-yao 60
Siao-kiao 65
Sha-shih-pu 55
Hsieh-tien-tze 75
King-kiang-sze 65
Heh-shui-tang 65
PAONING FU 65
Hsia-wu-li-tze 40
Sin-tien-tze 90
Mao-erh-tiao 90
Tien-kia-miao 70
Wu-lien 115
Tze-tung Hsien 80
Cheng-hsiang-po 80
Mienchow 43
Lun-gan (?) 90
Mienchuh 70
Shuang-tu-ti 45
Peng Hsien 80
Kuan Hsien 70
Sin-fan Hsien 105
Sin-tu Hsien 30
CHENG-TU FU 40
Kuan Hsien 120
Fu-ki 30
Sin-wen-ping 60
Shuo-chiao 40
Wei-cheo 60
Li-fan Ting 65
Tsa-ku-lao 60
Chuang-fang 60
Chu-ti 45
Miao-ko 50
Matang 105
Somo 60
Cheng-tu Fu to Shanghai, by water, 2000 miles.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A.

The Rules of the Chinese Guilds are too long and elaborate for insertion in this appendix, and condensation would do them an injustice.